


angry like a bad dog

by Princex_N



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Anger, Angst, During Canon, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Meltdown, Neurodivergent Brian, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23394229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Brian thinks he might be angry.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	angry like a bad dog

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes i write characters hurting themselves and breaking things to keep me from hurting myself and breaking things; that counts as a healthy coping mechanism right?
> 
> couldn't tell if this was more adhd or autism or mental illness so i just kept it vague with ND; also brian's opinion on his debatable personhood is a breakdown thought of my own and not a reflection of my views on nd people as a whole

Brian thinks he might be angry. 

It's three in the morning and Brian is awake and laying back on a shitty mattress he pulled out of some garbage pickup on the sidewalk and listening to the quiet roar of the wind in the trees and thinks he might be angry. 

It's almost hard to tell. He doesn't think he feels things right anymore, but he's pretty sure he never really did in the first place. It's different now, electric static and a read hot heat, but the principle is the same. He should be used to this, he thinks. He's dealt with more than this. He should be dealing with this better, probably. Didn't he used to before? He thinks he did. 

His mouth tastes like blood. He can't remember if it used to be different. He runs his tongue over his teeth, thick and dry and animal. 

He used to be more than this, he thinks. 

But did he? Thick scar tissue over the inside of his cheeks and a dull energy burning in his chest, this is familiar isn't it? A dull roar in his ears and an itch in his fingers that demanded something from him he never could quite pin down. The urge to break things, hurt himself, pressing in under his skin. 

He recognizes it. It isn't new. 

But shouldn't he know how to deal with it then?

He's _angry_ , he thinks. Choking on the swell of it in the back of his throat and grinding his teeth against the urge to scream (when was the last time he made a noise that wasn't a wet gagging cough?), letting the jarring scratch of bone against nerves radiate sandpaper pain through his skull.

Brian never was good at feeling things like other people. It makes sense that it would get worse now that he's not a person anymore. 

Dizziness pulses behind his eyes, nausea swooping in his gut. His fingers hurt. He presses his head back into the mattress and runs his tongue over the flat of his molars until the abrasive grind hurts. There's an urge to hurt. 

There's a distant recognition that hurting yourself is Bad, but he's having trouble remembering why. It's bad if other people notice, but there is no one to notice. He's alone, only showing _exactly_ what he wants other people to see. It's bad to hurt yourself, people are supposed to take care of themselves. 

Brian doesn't think he's a person anymore. 

Clumsy fingers fumble with the gloves he's wearing, pulling them off and not caring where they end up in this moment. The joints protest the movements and shake as he watches them, and he is angry and he _hates_ them. His canine teeth dig sharp into the meat of his hand (what's left of it anyway; eating is hard to care about these days) and the pain radiates satisfying through the nerves, an anxious dog chewing its paws - and isn't that fitting?

The pain dulls and he readjusts, biting down on new skin until metal heat bursts over his tongue, and it helps, but not enough. He could lay here and chew his hands to bloody meat and the energy pressing down in his lungs would still not fade. 

The forest is quiet and Brian realizes that he hates that, too. He stumbles to his feet, fighting through the dizzy pressure in his head as he searches in the dark for something, anything. Rotten wood against his palms and snapping hard against the dirt covered cement, the impact radiating up his arms and the shrapnel of breakage smacking against his shins. People don't like it when you break things when you're angry, but everyone he had was pulled screaming out of his hands and there is no one left to care, so Brian doesn't either. 

Glass shatters when he throws something through the remnants of a window, the noise doesn't ring out in the silence like he's expected and Brian realizes he is screaming - hoarse and cracking and ragged ("Use Your Words" people always told him growing up but he can't remember the last time he did, his voice is foreign to his own ears) - the tear of it through his throat aches and he lets it, driving his fists into worn down cement and shards of glass covered in dirt and small plants forcing their way through what's left of the floor, and the bites and the skin splitting under the force _hurt_ and Brian needs them to. He screams and it sounds more like a wail - thin and childish, and he wants the animal anger back. 

Brian never did feel things like normal people - emotions always too big for him to handle. The grief and sadness is too much to fit in his chest, overflowing and spilling out of the sides of him, there's no _room_. Curled on the dirt and trying to push it out of his head before it drowns him, tears cut through the dust and grime and blood on his face and he sobs so hard he nearly gags like a little kid, skull slamming backwards with an edge of desperation. It's exhausting and Brian doesn't have the space for it anymore, if he ever did. Emotions were always too big for him as a person and he can't fit them any better as this new kind of animal. They break and spill and _hurt_ and he hates them. 

He just wants it to be over. It never seems to be. 

His legs shake when he tries to stand again, after minutes or hours or days or months of rattling apart on the floor, and his knees won't take his weight. He crawls instead over to the old mattress that clouds with dust and dirt when he drags his body back onto it, curling as small as his aching limbs will allow him, tasting blood and salt on his tongue and feeling the sharp throb of agony in the wounds he had created and the dull ringing of his head. Exhaustion swamps him thoroughly, pushing him down into the dull hollow ache of rest, and Brian distantly wonders at the noise and the threat of discovery and finds he can't care. 

He sleeps and doesn't mind if someone kills him in the middle of it. 

(Not that anyone will. He'll wake up again, and won't be able to tell if it's determination or disappointment under his skin as he uses his meager first-aid supplies to clean up the bruised and torn wasteland of his body. He'll pull his gloves back on, and his mask, and breathe through the thick humidity of the fabric and push on because there's no other option. People have choices, but Brian's not a person anymore.) 

(He thinks he'll wake up angry.) 

**Author's Note:**

> me looking at the number of mh breakdown ventfics i've been writing this quarantine: hm, perhaps _i_ am having a breakdown??
> 
> [there's art for this too](https://www.instagram.com/p/B-XmAXLgfhN/)
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
